A PIM is recommended so that you have your product data in a central repository that can easily be accessed and maintained. If the data is in Shopify, which is not a PIM, then the data is not as easy to manage. Yes, you can export the data from Shopify, make changes, and then reimport it into Shopify. But this is not ideal if you are making changes often or need to feed products into other systems like Amazon, eBay, product feeds for marketing, or any other system that requires product data.

Importing Data

An easy method to import the data into the system. Typically this will only be done once, as then you will manage the data with in the PIM. But the system enables additional uploads to add data or update existing data.

Managing Data

The system has tools to easily view and update the data. Views allow you to filter, sort, and order the data in any manner. And you can have as many views as needed. Rules engine allows you to create simple rules to update and manipulate the data

Exporting Data

Ideally you would want to export your data into third party systems. Creating a custom export will let you filter the products in the export, choose which columns or data elements you want to export, or make some specific rules to change the data on export.